


airplane pt.2

by ranpoism



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canon, Complete, Fluff, M/M, No Main Character Death, i love them, protect ash at all costs, soft, what ash deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 08:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranpoism/pseuds/ranpoism
Summary: a silver lining can be found by looking up at the edges of a cloud.ash finds his in a letter.subsequently, eiji finds his silver lining in a boy wreathed in gold.





	airplane pt.2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calla/gifts), [Nita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nita/gifts), [Florentina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florentina/gifts), [Christy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christy/gifts), [kei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kei/gifts), [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat/gifts), [koushi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/koushi/gifts), [Kacie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacie/gifts), [Nads](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nads).



> this is ash’s story rewritten. i wrote this on a whim, feeling disappointed in the ending the anime gave us. it’s a bit messy, but written with love. enjoy!
> 
> p.s. hi, yes, the title is a song reference !!

Ash’s heart pounds, a frenetic rhythm that contradicts the calm in his mind.

His mind had always been a labyrinth of side-streets and back alleys, calculating all the different possible scenarios and rerouting him when necessary. 

But right now, there’s just a single sidewalk in front of him, albeit cracked and crawling with vengeful weeds.

He needs neither Adriane’s string to guide him, nor his own bottomless knowledge of the city’s streets. He needs only instinct and the echoing memory of Eiji’s voice.

—

“We are now boarding flight 23-F to Tokyo, Japan. At this time, we will begin pre-boarding. Priority passengers, including those with infants and handicaps, may board. I repeat…”

Eiji feels a slight jostle of his wheelchair as Shunichi stands up from the bench beside him. The small bump pulls him out of his dreamlike reverie, and the world around him becomes crisper, more definite in his mind.

Right. He’s in the airport. Leaving New York City.

And yet, he’s still not aware that Shunichi is talking to him, even as he watches his mustache bob up and down with every word. His lips stretch and fold as he articulates meaningless syllables strung together.

_What is he saying?_

Eiji nods obediently, and then the wheels under him start to rotate. Shunichi pushes them to the checkpoint, where two boarding passes are inspected, scanned, and returned.

The time it takes them to cross the jet bridge and find their seats on the plane feels infinitesimal, like a flashback lasting a brief second. Which is odd, Eiji thinks, because his thought processes are moving no faster than the crawl of molasses. He decides to speak on it, this peculiar feeling of simultaneous hypersensitivity and numbness.

“Ibe-san… am I— have I been drugged…?” The words are clunky and trip out of his mouth with none of the finesse that Ash would have managed.

“Drugged?” Shunichi’s forehead creases, and he looks sideways at Eiji, across the empty seat between them. He is confused for a second, but then he finds the thin thread of thought Eiji had been clinging to. His response is slow and deliberate.

“You’re not drugged, Eiji. You don’t need to think about things like that anymore. Drugs, murder… rape.” He adds the last bit hesitantly, and almost regrets it when Eiji’s brown eyes widen, chestnut irises dull but comprehending.

“I have to think about it,” Eiji whispers, turning away. “Healing doesn’t mean forgetting, and forgetting isn’t really healing.” He rests his head on the window, letting the cold surface make his skin tingle. It’s better than being devoid of sensation.

Below him, men in bright vests scurry around with luggage, taking and giving orders. The sky is unnaturally vibrant today; the harsh sunlight glints off of everything reflective, making it almost painful to look outside. Most of the plane’s passengers have shut their windows to create faux, late-afternoon hours for an optimal sleeping atmosphere.

Eiji will sleep later. The voyage is around fourteen hours anyways; he can catch up on sleep then, when the monotony of the ride has taken full effect.

He doesn’t want to look away from the window and lose his last minutes in America. It’s a desperate act, and he knows there is nothing to gain. All airports look the same; the jet bridges, the runways, the airplanes filed in a line along the strip, waiting to swallow passengers into their stomachs. Eiji is just one of those passengers in one of the many airplanes waiting for takeoff in one of the many airports.

Still, he keeps vigil.

Part of him is aware of why he does, but the other part, the stronger part, doesn’t give him the chance to consider it. The silver lining lies in that letter; his hope is in other hands now.

Eiji wonders when the plane will start moving. He’s not impatient, just expectant. When one seeks the inevitable, the inevitable takes great lengths and detours to delay its arrival. Which would be fine with Eiji, but he’s starting to get a tad irritated by the safety video looping on the screen in front of him. Every screen is playing the same thing, and the constant color shifts all around him are disorienting.

He tries to avert his gaze back to the window, but just then a lady’s voice cuts through the thick hum of useless airplane chatter.

“Sir, what would you like to drink? Sir?”

Eiji’s head slowly turns towards the voice that seems to be speaking to him. It’s a brunette stewardess, and she’s peering at him expectantly. Shunichi is looking at him too, a small plastic cup of water in hand. There’s a complimentary bag of pretzels already waiting in the hand of the stewardess, like she’s politely demanding Eiji to take a snack and a drink. 

It reminds him vaguely of kindergarten, and all the dry animal crackers that were forced upon him, along with the nasty, sugary fruit punch.

Eiji tilts his head.

“Isn’t it early for refreshments?” His small comment gets lost in a wash of conversations around them, but the stewardess gives a tiny smile, like she had understood him.

The plane hadn’t even departed from the airport yet, much less moved an inch, and the cart was already at their row, situated near the front of the cabin.

Eiji, at least, thinks it’s odd.

“I’ll have to ask you to put your tables back in the locked position during our ascent,” the stewardess says, “But for now, you can enjoy a little snack while you wait.”

The stewardess gives her best service smile and holds out the packet of pretzels for Eiji to grab. He closes his hand around it, fingers curling unsurely around the lump. She grabs a pitcher of ice-water from her cart and fills up a cup, which Eiji receives in his other hand.

“Thank you for the snacks,” he says, although he knows how tasteless the mini pretzels will be. 

The stewardess gives a generic, hospitable response, and Eiji watches as she pulls her cart back the direction she had come, towards the rear of the cabin.

There was still several rows of passengers in front of them left to serve, but Shunichi hadn’t sensed anything weird, so Eiji lets it be. He bends down slightly to unzip his carry-on bag and store the unwanted pretzels in there— maybe his sister would like them? But then he feels something that rubs against the palm of his hand differently than the smooth, shiny plastic. It’s a rougher texture, and when he lifts the bag up for inspection, he sees a bit of paper has been taped to one side. It’s only big enough for three, ink-scrawled words: _look behind you._

Eiji doesn’t dare breathe. He doesn’t blink, and the rest of the world goes fuzzy around those weighty, black letters. He’s scared the moment will be lost, like the second the silence in his mind is interrupted, the magic will cease.

Suddenly, something in his gut pulls; Eiji unfastens his seatbelt and whips around. His eyes can’t focus on anything at first; they’re just searching, searching for a sliver of white gold or a fragment of jade against a kaleidoscope of monochrome tones.

_“Hey, sweetheart.”_

And then all there is is sparkling, verdant green eyes and platinum blond hair; his vision is filled with it. Ash is standing there, a single row behind them, his hand against the back of Eiji’s chair. He leans casually towards Eiji, watching the thinly veiled disbelief and conflict play out on his face.

Every emotion that crosses Eiji’s face is genuine and raw; he never tries to smother it, or twist it into something other than what it is.

Ash finds it mesmerizing.

In any other circumstance, this would have been funny to Eiji. A clever prank, an intricate surprise. But right now, he’s too busy just trying to comprehend that the man in front of him is tangible and won’t dissolve when reality flows back into his senses.

There’s a boarding pass fisted in his left hand.

He’s wearing a long, cream coat over a black-turtleneck.

His hair is windblown, maybe from running, but his expression looks anything but worn-out.

He’s smiling.

Eiji takes a mental inventory of every perceivable facet of Ash Lynx in the amount of time it takes him to inhale a single, deep breath. Then, with surprising strength and enthusiasm even he didn’t know he possessed, his arms fly around Ash’s neck and hold on for dear life.

Eiji buries his face into the soft, warm material of Ash’s turtleneck. In his peripheral, he can see Shunichi turn around, jaw dangling. He doesn’t relax his grip on Ash, even under the heat of a hundred, staring eyes. A flight attendant calls out:

“Excuse me, gentlemen, I am going to have to ask you to take your seats. We are preparing for takeoff.”

Eiji lifts his head up and murmurs, “There’s an empty seat next to me. Come here.”

Ash, with an amused gleam in his eyes, replies, “I know. Row 6, Seat B.” He waves the boarding pass in front of Eiji’s eyes before deftly slipping out of his row and into theirs.

As he sits down, the flight attendant in the front starts her announcements and the seat-belt demonstration. The plane begins to crawl forward, but Eiji has no more interest in soaking in the New York City landscape through his window.

He’s found the most important piece of the city in this very plane, shedding a coat and raking pale fingers through messy, blond locks.

“How did you… get into the plane… from behind…?” Eiji’s rambling is incoherent, the words lodged in his throat. Unwavering, jade eyes watch Eiji stumble through his thoughts.

“I mean… nevermind. You probably went through a hatch, or found your way into a separate staff entrance.”

“I did not.”

A pout forms; Eiji’s lips twitch into a slight pucker, and then Ash laughs. It’s a breathy chortle, light and unrestrained.

“You were staring so intently into that window, I guess you didn’t see me sauntering down the aisle.”

Eiji’s mouth falls into a cherry-sized ‘o’.

“And the note on the pretzels?”

Ash shrugs. “Just a favor.”

Eiji grabs his forearm unexpectedly, feeling the solidness of the muscles under the sleeves.

“You’re real, right? Really Ash?” He says, his voice quivering but demanding. The whole ‘Ash going to Japan’ concept was hard to register for him. He tightens his grip slightly when the blond doesn’t reply.

In this capacity, words are rendered useless to Ash; not even his stock of vocabulary could suffice as an answer. He acts on instinct purely, like he always has. He cups soft cheeks between his hands and melts into Eiji, their lips losing form first.

Warm hands lock behind his neck again, and Ash briefly wonders if his own hands around Eiji’s face are cold. 

Eiji shivers. Not from the contact— yes, from the contact. Not from Ash’s frigid temperature, but from the burst of ecstasy that races down his spine. The sheer exhilaration feels familiar; it’s almost like the flight in pole-vaulting, yet it has a completely foreign flavor.

This is the apex of his jump, back arched and eyes flung wide. He gasps for air in-between the rhythm of their beating hearts and dancing lips. His mind is swaying and teetering precariously like a cheerful drunkard, and his hands become loose around Ash’s neck, until they flop uselessly at his sides.

And then the blond pulls away, his hands tracing down from Eiji’s cheeks to his jaw, down his neck, across the curve of his shoulders, and find two, shaking hands.

“How was that?”

“Good. Really good,” Eiji breathes out, taking a shaky breath. He’s embarrassing himself, he knows, but the candid answer slips out unchecked.

His face flushed and his vision frayed at the edges. This is familiar to him, too. It’s the moment after he hits the landing pad, his back to the earth and his eyes to the skies. When he lays there for a second, soaking in the entire experience, letting his mind catch up to his body. He’s not given more than a second, though; not on the track, and apparently, not even here.

Leaning over Shunichi, a stewardess clears her throat and raps her knuckles on the folding table in its upright position.

“You two, I really am going to have to insist on the seatbelts. Blondie, there’s only so much I can do on your behalf,” she smirks, and Eiji notices she’s the same one from the refreshment cart.

“Yes ma’am,” Ash chirps, buckling his belt smartly and tightening it in one, smooth movement. Once Eiji has done the same in a considerably more clumsy manner, Ash pats the belt across his lap and beams at the stewardess. She snorts and sashays away.

Eiji grins at Ash and chastises him, mostly to play the part he always has.

Because if he’s being honest, he half wishes they still had their belts off.

—

Ash asks a question later, when Eiji wakes up, rubbing his neck from the discomfort of airplane seats. 

“Eiji, which part of pole-vaulting was the most exciting for you?”

“Mm… probably, like, when I reached the summit. When you’re up there, and you release your pole, and you realize that mankind can fly.”

Ash likes that answer; it’s very Eiji-like. He closes his eyes, imagining himself going through the motions.

“I think, if I was into pole-vaulting, I’d get more out of the moments before the launch. Those few seconds when you execute the approach run.”

“Huh? Why?” The japanese sounds scandalized, like everything he knows about the sport has been challenged.

“That’s when you’re the most emotionally-charged. The moments before you let your body take over the motions you’ve practiced to become fluid and nearly mechanical. You’re the most scared during the approach run; you feel human and vulnerable. Or at least, I would think.” 

“What do you need to be human for? When you’re soaring above everything, you become something greater.”

“I think I need to feel human. To feel heightened emotions and sensations, the build-up before the let-go. You make me feel that way, Eiji.”

“Scared?”

“No, passionate.”

Ash doesn’t know if this is the way out of the labyrinth, or if he’s just sank deeper into its abysmal, convoluted folds. At least now, though, he won’t have to face the unknowns alone.

_— finis._

**Author's Note:**

> well, there you have it. a satisfying ending for the two boys that deserve it the most. we can all pretend this is the canonical ending :))
> 
> i love ash, eiji, yut-lung, and especially blanca; if you want to talk to me about them, my twitter is @settersclub
> 
> love you all, have a wonderful holidays !


End file.
